Thorough Ivestigation of Banning? -let's do the math

Ok - because of the number of recent threads about people being "unjustly banned" for bot behavior, I was curious. ANet's defense is that they do a thorough job of investigation before banning an account for 3rd party software. But is that possible?

Gaile has already said in another post that they ban 2000 account per week. Now, let's say they have 4 people employed full time (40hrs/week) to investigate bots. Each one must investigate 500 per week. That means 12.5 accounts investigate per person per hour. That comes to 4.8 minutes spent investigating each account.

Hmm, if someone spent less than 5 minute observing me, I might appear to be a bot too.

On the other hand, if they were to spend even as much as 1/2 hour "thoroughly investigating" each bot suspect, they would have to employ 25 full time people who did nothing but check on possible bot accounts. Do you honestly think they do that?

Me thinks many of those who said they were banned unjustly just may be telling the truth.

They probablly aren't just spending 5 miniutes "observing the person." They are probablly spending 5 miniutes or so looking over the server logs that have been automatically tracking the behavior of flagged players.

There is no extensive investigations as a post i made about a friend of mine showed which was closed. They auto ban then if you complain the chances of you getting your account back is a little better.

Although you bring up a very good point (and I'm sure they have more than 4 people that investigate more than just "bot-like" activity, but for the sake of argument, we'll stick with your assumptions), there's something else you're forgetting. You're assuming the supposed 2,000 banned every week are the only ones being investigated. That's basically saying everyone they investigate is banned, period. It's a lot more likely they investigate 10-20x that amount, and then a percentage of that total number end up banned. That means these "4 full-timers" are investigating upwards of 20,000-40,000 people per week. That's what, 125-250 accounts per person per hour?

It's possible, I guess. Make that 4 people into 8 people, and you cut that down to 62.5-125 per hour, and then allow for them to be able to watch maybe 10 people at a time - 6.25-12.5 per hour. Of course, this is average time, and too many factors to assume. Some people might be more obviously not bots (stopping to have a conversation with guildies, for example) and within a couple of minutes they are moving on to another subject. It's very possible, I think.

As I actually do investigations via computer analysis of databases for high risk transactions my personal expertise tells me that there are certain paramaters that trigger me to look a little more closely at an individual. At that point I spend several hours and cross check other documentation and records before I do anything. Of course, for me, it is not a game, these people lose their jobs and/or go to jail. So the threshhold of action is somewhat higher.

I can't say with certainty what paramaters there are that trigger them, but account activity, professions (being a Mo/W), locations visited, wealth, etc., I am sure work against an account holder and put them further up the profile.

I am sure that Anet does not want to disclose what their investigative methods are because the botters are coming up with strategies of their own to reduce their own risks of losing their accounts. Hours logged on? Get multiple accounts and switch them out every few hours. Same location? Switch it around a little. Cash on hand? Spread it around the accounts a bit.

I would hope that they actually observe the player online and draw a conclusion followed by some sort of supervisory review before they actually ban someone.

If they just look at thresholds and ban you automatically when you hit certain paramaters, then I think they would have a user riot on their hands.

Some bots are pretty easily investigated, so you can cut out a lot of time just checking the main bot farm places, and banning the ones that display OBVIOUS bot-like behaviour...

What I'm wondering is, how can a real person show bot-like behaviour? When you're walking around in the Guild Wars world you can easly reconize the bots by the following things:
A bot:
- Is always Mo/W ( with exeptions on a few N/A's )
- Has standard looks
- Has standard armour
- Has standard armour colour
- Always walks in the same pattern
- Always have nicknames that have been randomly bashed on the keyboard ( Diwje Naond, Ijkkj Nidwj, etc )
- Are only to be found in common farming spots
- Never chat
- A LOT of hours online

Now, when a player plays Guild Wars. How can they even look like those? Living people don't generally have standard armour, have "dedicated" nicknames, other looks, they chat, etc. The only thing they might have in common with a bot is the amount of hours online, and the hours they spend farming. But for a human player it'd be impossible to farm literally as much as bots.

So what do the researchers try to find out? If a software program interferes with Guild Wars, sure that's a good guess. But what else?

I am not sure but I was banned for botting and I have never botted. Just before being banned I was farming bergen hot springs with my mo/d 55hp. my character name at the time was wicked farming monk and i had on starter armor so i did not fit many of the parameters listed by Aera. although I did have around 600k in the bank.

So no they do not only look at people with standard (and btw I dont know what you mean by standard) armor, or at only poeple with keyboard bashed names.

anet fails sometimes at differenciating a real player from a bot.

from what i've seen, anet auto-flags mo/w and they can somehow link multiple accounts to 1 user. they ban the botting accounts and storage accounts associated with it.

what's strange is that sometimes they ban accounts even before they bot. somehow they track the user's new accounts. i can certify this info from sum1 i know that bots. they guy even changed his IP and they still banned his newly created accounts before he started to bot on them. according to him, their bot detection system has improved since the release of nightfall. while it is good to get rid of bots, i think it's unethical to ban somebody before they actually commit the crime.

also a year ago, i seen 1 case in which anet banned a pvp player lol. he took a break and farmed UW for some time and he got banned. after countless emails to anet and arguments, they unbaned him.

but it seems that lately their detection system flags more innocents than before. i have seen more and more ppl complain about being banned unjustly permanently or not. only a few days ago a friend got a 72 hour ban for spaming 5 times wts xx IN trade chat..

what annoys me about anet's behavior these days is that they NEVER justify themselves. if you email then regarding a ban, they'll reply with an automatic bull-crap message stating that permanent bans are documented etc... you have to keep whining to get them to actually look into the issue. and then again, some GMs still don't look into it and u have to keep updating ur email again and again untill somebody takes pity in ur case and cheks. if u really didn't use any bots, they will unban u IF u keep whining to them and ask them for proof but it might take up to a few weeks.

i would also like to add they they take some weird measures to make sure you're the actual owner of the account. they even ask for your game cd-key. if you happen to throw the card after installing, they will refuse to adress ur issue. i once asked them something regarding a forgotten user name on playNC and they wanted a damn PICTURE of my game reciept...

the best thing is to not have any problems in the first place. if u forget ur pass/user name or if u act like a bot, u're in for a nasty surprise from the support department. of course this is only from my personal experience and from what friends told me. you might get lucky and actually meet helpful staff out there.

Define "standard looks" and "standard armor"? I've seen what appeared to bots(names like HBjhbjh Hbjjbhj with no guild, always runs for the sign post then outside with the exact same path, etc) with a wide variety of "looks". Always monk, always scar armor, but some of them have the armor dyed, some of them have different faces/skin colors/hair colors, etc. In other words, same as any human 55 monk farmer, aside from the name. Likewise, if by "standard" armor you mean non-max AL sets, most HUMAN players I know who farm with a 55 do it the same way, why spend money on a max AL set when your AL is irrelevant for that type of farming? Last of all, there's tons of apparent Mo/D farmers in Bergen, Mo/Me is common as well...they're certainly not all, or even almost all Mo/W. Oh, and about them not stopping to chat...well, when I'm farming, I don't usually stop to chat either. In fact, I normally play with All Chat turned OFF to avoid the spam, I only turn it on when I'm looking for something specific or in my guild hall with guildies, so I don't chat either. And that's certainly not just me, people who are online farming are online to make money, not to stop and shoot the breeze with random people in town. Hell, some of these people even log a lot of hours online. The only things close to a giveaway between a bot and an actual 55 monk farmer is that the bot will always follow the exact same path, whereas the human won't be as precise, and possibly the name choice(there's a better chance that a name like "Lol Another 55 Monk" is real than one named "HJbbyy Ihbgbh" I'll admit).

Bots are pretty amusing to watch actually, and it's kinda creepy to think that there is no person behind the char and that it's running on auto pilot...

I was farming Aborstone last night and noticed about 10 bots foolow each other in perfect single file in the exact same way every time... hectic!!!

I find it both creepy and amusing to watch too Destinny.

I'd love to see one...I probably have but I just wouldn't know...

Just go to Granite Citadel, it'll be pretty obvious which are the bots

Worst customer service ever. Friend's account got stolen and he couldn't change the password. He contacted ANet and they asked for a CD-Key, which he threw out (I'm sure cause he was in the game since Beta). As a result, he quit GW and some bot master took over the account... Tried to log into his account recently and it's permanently banned. The moral of the story is: No CD-Key, no service. Good thing I still have the receipts (I think), because I got rid of my CD-Keys while cleaning my room a while ago .

I dont really know how thorough your math investigation is, since its based on some arbitrary assumption that Anet only has 4 people investigating accounts.

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I dont know what Anet's setup is for flagging bots....but i know what i would flag and not flag for further investigation.

-15k armor, for now, its safe to assume bots dont do 15k armor
-Gold/perfect weapons that are HIGH cost. Anet knows which skins cost a lot.....My 55 monk uses a +5 energy Jade Sword with non-tattoo armor.
-If you are primarily hunting Mo/X bots....check if the account plays other classes.......If an account doesnt play ANYTHING else....thats a little suspicious
-Track PMs and Guild Chatter, no PMs and Guild...a little suspicious...(though not neccessarily bottish)
-Continous one-way transfer of gold/items.
-Lack of any friends in friendslist
-excessive activity time, as in, constant....Real people stop to use the bathroom and/or sleep or afk for some short amounts of time.... long amounts of AFK activity isnt counted since lots of REAL players do this.
-I dont know if Anet can tell which input a player is using, but a player using ONLY keyboard motions would get flagged by me...since players still need the mouse to adjust the view from time to time.

Then, only if you fit the "suspicious" flags then do you get investigated and tracked to see if you truly are botting.

But thats what I would do...i dont know what Anet does....but i know they can see what you see and their server records stuff you do and say.
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I keep anything with a registration or serial number for all my games, software and hardware, since i like to reformat a lot. I have a nice little box of serials.

Exact same thing happened to my mate's account, except I had his cd key (I gave it to him when I buzzed out how cool this game was... I'm stressing 'was' here :S). He's very lucky to have gotten his account back, but the stupid hacker deleted all of his characters.

A good portion of them have that armor (although one in that shot has cleverly died her arms green, fooling anyone thinking she is a bot). Now I don't see how these can run around all day in Granite Citadel and not get banned while my friend wearing nice armor, talking to us, gets banned.

Shouldn't ANet have a permanent watch on GC?

EDIT: Woops, meant to post thumbnail.

One of my friends just got banned for "botting". He was doing the Urgoz run. He wasn't using chat because he was on vent (I think thats what got him). Now his account is perm banned and he can not appeal it. He has called anet sent in emails trying to plead with them but now they just don't respond. Which is really stupid IMO.

An Urgoz Run ????

Not a botters haven there. But maybe the bans come sometime down the road from the events that actually lead to the ban???

ie: a person uses or acts like a bot and it is investigated for a day or two then they get banned in a different place.

Are all the people being banned 55's?

He wasn't a 55. I know that he has one but thats not the only build he runs thats what gets me. He runs a lot of farming builds so apparently his "botting program" knows how to run all of them and in all of the areas he farms. I just think they should let his appeal it instead of saying "We know with out a shadow of a doubt that you were botting because we've looked it over. We won't let you explain yourself to us because that would be the rational thing to do."

A guildie of mine was banned for botting, which I know he never has He was farming Rilohn Refuge (a lot) using a R/N build. Now I understand A-Net wanting to get rid of as many bots as possible, but getting rid of regular players just because they "think" they're botting is a little unfair in my opinion.

This ban first ask questions never deal is a little odd to me.

Throwing away your cd-key is pretty stupid if you ask me, after all that's what you paid for, you can download the client whereever,whenever you want for free. That's like throwing away your passport after crossing the border of a country, now you have no proof of your permission to have entered in the first place. No matter what the excuse, it's suspicious.

I think the "ban first ask questions never" deal needs to go. I just don't get why they wouldn't let him appeal it. Atleast look at his side of the story and stop sending automated emails.Who ever or what ever they have watching the "botters" needs to be fired or shutdown.

I could see them baning the Mo/W botters the ones that have no guild and a jibberish name but when they start to ban the real players who are just farming to save up for over priced items its stupid.

so, why isn't the investigator just sending a PM to the suspected bot?

Bots can't answer PMs, not coherently at least. If you are AFK, then your character shouldn't be moving anywhere. But if your character is actively engaged in something, and the investigator can see that you are actively engaged in something (loot is dropping - xp is rising) then they could PM you at that time. Just to ask you a few questions. Even if it was under the guise of conducting a player survey.
I'd sooner receive the occassional question from a GM about how I like the game, than have someone ban me because I'm using the Hot SPrings farm - I haven't yet, but my friend keeps telling me to try it (i generally don't like 55ing).

If the ban the bot users account does that also mean that it's delted?

If not I think enough proof as any is for one of the in game GM's to hand out whatever those bots farmed int he masses to us players.

(Only half-joking)

Can't you just pull your CD key from the main menu?

Actually, bots can respond to PMs. Accoridng to a PC Gamer investigation, most bot "sweet shops" have human overseers who montier a dozen or more bots at once (makes sure the program runs smoothly, bots aren't stuck in a wall, etc).

Hi,

Ironically I was just posting about this subject in another forum. I'll share that below--reduce, reuse, recycle! -- but I wanted to address some of your specific issues. We have various ways in which bots are identified. One is observation, it's true. A few weekends ago I played the role of "observer," just to see how easy it was to identify bots, and let me tell you, when you watch the same characters spin inside a chest for two hours, you can be pretty sure that's not backed by a human player. When you see the same odd pathing, or the "weird pathing parades" mentioned above, or when you see precise, predictable timing of appearance and actions over hours, you can make some level of assumption about "Is that real or is that a bot?"

We have a lot more people working on bots, on three continents. (Numbers mentioned in the discussion above are not even close.) Further, we can pull data on a suspected bot within a minute or two. We could run through a dozen names, and carefully review the data and make the daily/weekly/monthly numbers that we've publicized with ease. So don't worry, no one is getting an insta-ban for crossing a low threshold; they're getting blocked after several multiple reviews. (And HawkofStorms is right -- PMing is not a real good measure of bot-ness.)

Now, let me share a bit about bans: The number of people who are banned in error is miniscule. It may appear to be a "major problem" because those who are banned are vocal about it, sometimes understandably because the ban was in error, sometimes manipulatively, because they hope if they make a big enough fuss, they'll get unbanned. (Like the forum member a month or two ago who claimed his "store-purchased" account was closed unjustly, but who in fact was using a re-purchased PlayNC account that got closed in a charge-back scheme.) When you see protests, remember that what you often don't see after the "I was banned" thread is "I was unbanned" or "Ok, yes, I was botting and I (deservedly) lost my appeal," or "I said I was banned for botting, but in fact I was banned for scamming people or gold sales or something else that's disallowed, and I was trying to weasel out of it by joining the 'unjust ban' crowd."

The Support Team really does use a careful and conservative set of parameters for banning. They also take care to review all the data in cases where the ban may have been placed in error. That's not to say errors don't happen, but that's also not to say that an appeal is a "Get out of jail free card." Bans for clear use of bots should and will remain in place. However, the team is not inclined to ban for banning's sake, and they will give careful attention to issues with account actions and will discuss potential changes to the parameters if it appears that issues have arisen with how bots are identified or confirmed.

There may be some small risk in my saying all this, which is that it may encourage botters to appeal, or to think that if they only protest loudly enough "I didn't do it!" we'll say "Oh, ok, fine, you're cleared." We cannot do that! By the end of this month, the Support Teams will have banned about 8,000 bots. That is a good thing for the players and a good thing for the game economy and it's something that we will continue to do, always using care to ban only those who deserve it, and always showing consideration in setting the bar to avoid nabbing those who do not.

Thanks Gaile! Yeah I think a better "bar" to look for bots is the very methodical movements. Also good point about banned for other violations vs. botting. Another thing to up the number of banned bots is probably just to watch the IP. You find one, you might find 40 more.

I think it would be a neat statistic to know how much gold was sucked out of the economy for each bot-banning month. Of course, I would like any number of statistics that A.Net hasn't released (e.g., % of professions, number of elemental swords in play, average number of charr killed per day, etc.).

For a year now the bot city is Coperhammer Mines in Prophecies. You can always go there and see them. The strangest thing which people above said, is that isn't possible that Anet have employed working on looking boters. If they do that regular like steady job, you will never see any bot in Coperhammer, still as we speak there are few of them there even now, running around the left lantern and after a few minutes they go into map area. There are bigger issues here, because if the bot hunters working their job, they will probably cleansed the bot area. Just picture someone of the bot owners got themselves banned. What you think, that they will instantly go into first store wherever they are in the world, and immediately buy a fresh 50 copies of Guild Wars times 3 parts, and then install them on 50 machines for a matter of minutes. No! I don't think so. If there are bot police, they are doing a very lousy job!

People always reporting this things, I got a friend who thinks his reports will met the standards of "bot police". But the ANET never answered him. Although he is doing this, because his friend got banned with no particular reason, no spam, no cursing, no bot. Poor guy played eventually 40 hours or so, just getting to know the game, and they banned him. He didn't know what has happened and didn't bother to send any emails, he never played again.

So if they have some software for bot spotting, or even people looking into the matter and getting pay for that job, everyone there doing a lousy job, since innocent people getting banned.

I don't bot, and don't know how to anyway. I don't know anyone who does either. I don't even know anyone who was banned, for any reason. No, that said:

Certain areas are EASY to see bots, and know they are a bot. Granite Citadel for example. Mo/X, no dye, no guild, odd names, same pathing, etc. Yes, I have seen REAL people use this as a farming ground, but the bots are blatantly obvious to a casual person. If it is so obvious to someone like me, why does it continue so rampantly when Anet has more info available to show these are bots?

Why are there bots? To make money, and I do not mean GW gold. These are programs designed to make large amounts of GW gold, so that the owner can sell that GW gold for real life currency. Go to Great Temple of Balthazar, or Ascalon, or Kaineng, etc. and you can find a spammer telling you a website to buy GW gold for real money, and the price. So, a simple way for Anet to find a bot is to monitor trades made by an account. If a bot is GIVING all the gold it makes to other characters (either people who bought it, or a companies 'meet for trade' character) then there is an obvious reason for this.

Bots don't bother me personally, as they do not interfere with me playing the game. However, I understand the reasoning behind removing them, and agree with it. If Anet banned more accounts (justly, I'm not talking about people who don't deserve it)they make more money when these people buy another account to continue botting. If they don't buy more accounts to continue, then the botting ends, and they save money by removing people paid to find and ban the bots.

I don't think the larger issue is the innocence or guilt of any one particular person. Or their appeal of the ban.

What would put the community at ease, is showing us that the support staff does infact give a response other than (what boils down to): "We know you did it, no appeal, deal with it!".

If a person is perm banned, they should be provided with this "evidence", that is so concrete that there is no chance of appeal. It's like executing somebody on death row, then finding out 20 years later that he didn't do the crime.

I would rather have a bot or two, or a thousand go free, than one innocent guy who has put in hours and hours into their account get hung out to dry.

amen firebaall. they should send screenshots to the email address linked to the account, have the subjected name Account Ban - Permanent, and provide screenshots or 'statistics' of what you do.

The best advice is if your local law enforcement being the Police has a computer forensics lab take your computer to check for bot programs and then get signed affidavit .Then you can get them to sent it to Anet and that will clear you instantly if not it sure will in a court of law which in where I live will cost 50 to 60 K and I won't be paying a dime.

If your law enforcement agency does not have a forensics computer person than take to a good computer store and get them to sign the affidavit swearing to it.That will clear you as well.I would have to say just because some ppl stay in one zone for some time doesn't mean they are guilty.It is sort of like someone standing that may look like they maybe a drug trafficker is selling drugs maybe they are just hanging out.

To Aera not all of them are Mo/Ws .It is to bad the datback file can't detect bot programs or have something in your GW folder than can.

I would be very interested in hearing about some legal action somebody has taken against Anet for an unjust permanent ban.

Now Gaile has said above how many protest and profusely exclaim their "innocence", and I agree that is likely a problem in many cases. However...the burden of proof should be on Anet to provide documented evidence. A screen shot, or log of identical keystrokes every .4435 ms. You know? Some other response that "We know you're guilty", "No appeal".

The only recourse for somebody that has hundreds or thousands of hours "invested" in their account (and facing this senario), is contacting a lawyer and proceeding with legal action. That's insane, and shouldn't even be necessary.

What if this happens to me or you? What would you do? Aren't you concerned with the apathy of the guild wars community or Anet's support? It's like a nature show where a lion kills a zebra. Yea, there's a momment of panic in the herd, but sonner or later the "cows" go back to grazing (hey, I'm still here right?).

Disgusting.

As Gaile pointed out, a lot less real players are getting permabanned than you may think. You don't see threads starting up on the forums about how someone WASN'T banned, but instead you see threads about how people WERE banned. So naturally your mind would believe that there are tons of people getting unjustly banned just because of a thread or two.

However I do think that Anet asking to see your CD-key is a bit much. I know a lot of people who simply threw them away after using them; after all when would they be needed again? You activate your account once and that's it, no reason to keep it lying around. The fact that without it your appeal is useless (in the rare case that you do get permabanned) seems to be one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while.

The thing is alot of people who farm daily, farm the same time everyday. Lets say they farm at 5 p.m - 7 p.m everyday for two months. Is this bot like actions?

Also when you farm you basically don't stop and talk to people. You zone, kill chit and zone back, repeat over and over. So are we turning into mindless bots?

When farming the same loaction over and over before zoning, I usally type something in all chat. "I'm not a freaking bot" or "Stop watching young boys a-net". If you type something then hey i'm at my computer, so i'm not a bot.

O.o

I think the police got better things to do.....

There have been what, about 5 people mentioned in this thread already about friends/themselves being unjustly banned or so? Now 5 people may seem like a low number, but for a company such as ANet, that number should be TERRIBLY high. After they ban an account, they should log onto said account and snoop around even for a second. You see 6 level 20 chars with 15k armor or such, an appeal should be allowed.

It's rediculous in my opinion. Completely rediculous.